Eavesdropping on opening night crowds at Sonoma Film Fest

“This is all pretty wonderful! Just super! We’ve had some bumps along the way, here and there, but this film festival is always the event of the year!”

So exclaimed Sonoma’s Jerry Seltzer early Wednesday evening, as he stood with friends just outside the sprawling Back Lot Tent during the well-attended kick-off reception of the 19th annual Sonoma International Film Festival. The opening-night party – which featured dozens of food and drink stations, live music, and a trio of artists from the Alchemia program, in Petaluma and Santa Rosa – a partner with Sonoma’s “Everybody’s a Star” – painting vivid pictures as the swirling crowd of merry-making film fans frequently stopped by to watch – was just the beginning of a busy night of screenings, tributes, more parties, Gypsy jazz, and plenty of high-energy inside talk about the pitfalls and pleasures of making movies.

Inspired by the escalating film-positive vibe at the Back Lot tent – located, throughout the five-day festival, near the Sonoma Valley Veterans Memorial Building – original Film Festival founder Seltzer told stories about his early days as the founder of BASS Tickets, his operation of the International Roller Derby League, and his own brushes with filmmaking. In particular, he talked about the documentary movie he produced in 1971, titled “Derby,” telling the story of real life roller derby skaters.

“Skaters hated it. Audiences hated it. But the critics loved it,” Seltzer laughed. “Roger Ebert called it the best film of the year.”

Inside the tent, Liz Jahren, program director of Alchemia, an arts-based program for adults with disabilities, talked to partiers about the Alchemia and Everybody’s A Star artists.

“This is fun for them, to show off what they do by actually doing it in front of a crowd,” she said, standing beside artist Rosie Dawson, who was adding brown fur-like swirls to a painting of a mythological minotaur. A group of singers from Everybody’s A Star will be performing during the Saturday morning screening of the Australian dog-and-penguin comedy “Oddball” (9 a.m., at the Sebastiani Theatre).

As screenwriter Robert Kamen (“Karate Kid,” “The Fifth Element,” “Taken”) chatted with Festival director Kevin McNeeley and a group of fans, just before leaving for his onstage tribute at the Sebastiani Theatre, the Sonoma resident and winemaker happily admitted, “It’s so embarrassing! I’ve always turned it down before, but when Kevin said they’d be giving me a Tiffany wine bucket as part of the tribute, I said, “OK! I’ll do it!”